


i got the melody sharp

by ThisJoyAndI



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-08-30 04:46:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8519020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisJoyAndI/pseuds/ThisJoyAndI
Summary: (and the words all wrong)Tommy, Grace, and Charlie's determination to go to war. 'Perhaps if he were a crueller boy he would run, but despite the reputation, the stigma, attached to his last name, Charlie is nothing of the sort.'





	

_September 1939_

When war is declared on Germany, Charles Fredrick Shelby is only seventeen. The moment the wireless announces Britain is now in a state of warfare Tommy appears more terrified than she has ever seen him, and in this Grace finds she cannot reassure him, for she is just as scared. Their son does not know the extent of his father’s suffering in France and as such Charlie is entirely unaware just how terrible war really is, how it can still resonate years after it ends. They have taken every care to shelter Charlie and his sisters from the truth, and because of this they have raised a son who sees war as an obligation, a duty, not something he should avoid. His father served, his uncles, so why should he? Isn’t he a Shelby, a man of his word, after all? All he’s ever wanted to be is just like them, so why should he deny himself an experience that so clearly shaped them into the men they are today. Grace wants to scream that it is not an experience her son should desire, wants to scream that his father still has nightmares, as she knows Arthur and John do. Charlie is her son, her baby still despite his height and broad shoulders, and she will not freely send him off to a place she knows will only destroy him.

Thankfully he’s only seventeen, and for all his protesting Charlie requires the consent of his parents to serve.  And they will not give it, Tommy especially. _Not yet_. That may mean they only have a year to convince him otherwise, but it is still a year. It took less than a year for Charlie to grow inside her and enter the world, so surely a year is enough time to convince him that he does not need to go and fight, that he should stay home and continue about his life. They’d been planning to let him shoulder more of the burden when it came to the business anyway, Tommy much happier in the stables than he is behind a desk. Perhaps such a request could entice him to stay, show him he has obligations at home that he must honour. She does not want her son so far from her, fighting against a foreign enemy. Grace can only find comfort in the fact that his sisters are too young to even entertain the idea of volunteering their services as well, content with their dresses, books and music lessons. She doesn’t know what she’d do if all three of her children were determined to leave, to risk their lives when they are so precious to her.

Charlie is her firstborn, the baby that made it possible for her to be with Tommy, and the mere thought of him dying so far away from home plagues her constantly after he announces his desire to serve, Grace often waking in the middle of the night gasping for air. Tommy has slept little since Charlie’s proclamation, and it is his arms that hold her tight as she struggles to breathe, her heart racing in her chest. She will not let this war harm her son the way its predecessor did his father. She made it possible for him to inherit a legitimate business, laboured for hours to birth him and dreamt so often of the future, the family, he would someday have. She will not let _anything_ take that away from him. He is only seventeen, the hair on his cheeks patchy and a slight squeak still evident in his voice. He is her firstborn, her baby. He is headstrong, determined and fearless, qualities she recognises he has inherited from both herself and Tommy and cannot help but adore, and she will not let those qualities drain out alongside his precious blood. She doesn’t care if the king himself, that accursed Churchill, demands that he serve. America hasn’t announced their plans to enter the war, and so if it comes to it, America is where they will go. She knows Arthur’s house will always be open to them, even if Linda attempts to convince him otherwise, and Tommy is more than respected amongst their American contacts. It’s been over sixteen years since Clive’s death, and even if something were to be said about the murkiness surrounding the event, America will still surely prove safer for Charlie than the battlefield.

When she looks at her son she can see the best bits of herself and Tommy in him, the light still in his eyes and a smile easy to come to his lips. She will not let that light be extinguished, not even if she has to bundle him up as if he were still a baby and escort him to America herself. Tommy still suffers from his time in France, even after two relatively peaceful decades have passed, and whilst she cannot do anything but murmur soft words to try and ease his pain, she can prevent the same from ever happening to their son. For the love she bears Tommy, the love she has for the children they created together, she will do everything in her power to see them all safe.

Hasn’t she proven herself more than capable of doing as such, these last seventeen years? The Italians tried to kill her when Charlie was only two, the presence of their second child still so very fragile and unknown to her. The resulting gunshot wound had been serious, her grief over their lost child almost unbearable, but she had survived, the scar nearly faded into nothing after seventeen years of Tommy’s gentle caress. Her heart though, it still aches each and every year for the child she suspected resided inside her, the child who died before it could ever live.  It had taken her a while to conceive after that, and perhaps that is why she cherishes Charlie so much. For years she had thought he would be the only child she would ever have, before her stomach swelled once more, Margaret forever moving inside her as if to reassure her mother of her presence.

Grace fears Charlie may run away and thwart their refusal to consent to his service that way, forge their signatures and be gone from the country before they could find him. He doesn’t, but she still checks that he’s sound asleep in his bed every morning all the same. Just in case. Perhaps if he were a crueller boy he would run, but despite the reputation, the stigma, attached to his last name, Charlie is nothing of the sort. Even as a child, when her previously undivided attention had suddenly been absorbed by Margaret and then by Kathleen, Charlie hadn’t seemed to mind. Rather he’d helped her, playing quietly with Margaret as Kathleen fussed and beaming with pride when she showered praise on him for his consideration. She knows his sisters have spoken to him, and perhaps it is because of them that he does not leave. For he barely speaks to Tommy or her nowadays, conversation restrained to mere courtesies, but Grace knows that silence is better than death. He is still here, with them, and so the silence bothers her only a little, a lot less than it does Tommy.

One night, when Charlie attempts to provoke his father by uttering his desire to ask her uncle to recommend him for service in the Irish Guard, Tommy wordlessly lets his cutlery fall from his hands and onto the table. Her daughters watch as their father shoves back his chair and storms from the dining room, a cigarette already poised between his lips. Grace glares at her son, shaking her head, for whilst Charlie may not know the extent of his father’s wartime suffering, he is more than aware of the hatred that still exists between the Shelbys and those in her family who served in the Guard. Her son simply stares back at her, unblinking, and Grace sighs, excusing herself from the table and trailing after Tommy. As expected, she finds him in their bathroom, perched on the edge of the bath like he had been the night of their wedding, the butts of three cigarettes littering the tiles underneath his feet and another half-smoked. She plucks the cigarette out of his mouth and stubs it out, placing a hand on either side of his face to make him look at her. Her hands are unadorned, save for her ornate engagement ring, and cold against his cheeks, flushed red with anger.

“He doesn’t mean it,” she murmurs, crouching down slightly to better meet his gaze, despite the slight protest such a movement receives from her joints. “He’s just trying to provoke you, to make you mad, in the hopes that we’ll become so frustrated with him that we’ll let him join.” She trails a thumb across Tommy’s jaw, her husband somewhat in need of a shave. “But we’re not going to, are we Tommy?”

“No, Grace.” Tommy swallows, presses a kiss to the centre of her left palm. “We’re not.”

“He’s safe, Tommy.” Grace smooths a hand down his neck. “We’re safe.” As she has countless times over the last eighteen years, she tells him, “You’ve made us safe.”

And for the next few months, her words prove true. The war rages on in Poland, in Belgium, in France, but life continues on as per normal for the Shelbys, Margaret’s first encounter with love ending in a shattered heart that sees Grace holding her eldest daughter as she weeps and Tommy’s desire to inflict a similar hurt on their daughter’s beau enacted by their son before his father ever gets the chance. It is the first thing the two have agreed upon in months, and despite the circumstances, Grace cannot help but be pleased by such a show of cooperation. She is quietly optimistic, even as Charlie’s birthday looms ever closer, what is usually a day of immense celebration now appearing more like a death sentence in her eyes. She does not believe for a second that their son has given upon on his desire to serve, not when he has such headstrong parents like she and Tommy, and his quiet acceptance of their refusal to let him go is only temporary. She only hopes he allows them to celebrate his birthday before he boards a train to London and dons the uniform she is certain he will die in.

She enters Charlie’s room early one morning, a week or so before his birthday. It is astounding to think that this time eighteen years ago she was unable to walk great distances due to the weight of her belly, and now, her son is a nearly a man grown, the very image of his father. It had hurt her a little, the fact that he resembled Tommy so much when she had been the one to labour for hours to birth him, the one who had carried him inside of her for nine long months. There is nothing in Charlie’s appearance that is similar to her own, but in his mannerisms Charlie is so much alike her that as he grew she came to appreciate how similar he looks to Tommy. Margaret has inherited her blonde hair, Kathleen her love of singing. Their children are mixtures of them both, and she cherishes the son that shows her what his father would have been like before the war, fearless and quick to laugh. She loves him so much and she does not want to see his easy smiles tainted like his father before him. It seems that it is upon her that the burden of convincing him not to leave falls, and she will try her best to fulfil such a seemingly impossible task. 

Charlie stirs at her touch, his hair ruffled from sleep. Grace smiles down at him, smooths a hand over his dark hair like she used to when he was little and fussing in his crib. “Hello,” she murmurs softly, the dawn just breaking outside his window.

Charlie furrows his brow at her, quiet. Then, suddenly, as the first rays of daylight stream into his room, he breaks his mother’s heart, almost carelessly. “I’m going,” her son utters, sitting upright and shifting away from her touch. “I don’t care if you lock me in this room, send me away, bribe them not to let me join…I’m going.”

Grace sucks in a shallow breath. “Oh, Charlie,” is all she can seemingly say, her heart aching and tears beginning to pool in her eyes. She blinks them away, for the last time she cried openly in her son’s presence he was too young to remember it, asleep safely in his crib as she bid him farewell, the gunshot wound just above her heart heavily bandaged.

He looks directly at her, and she recognises the determination in his eyes. She sees it every day when she looks in the mirror, when she looks at Tommy. She knows many curse the Shelbys for being so determined, so headstrong, and right now, she thinks she could count herself amongst them. “Mum,” he begins, softening somewhat as he registers the tears in her eyes. “It’s my duty. I have to go,” he stresses, stretching a hand out towards her. She does not move to take it, and so Charlie’s hand dangles awkwardly in the space between them for one anguishing heartbeat, then another, before he swiftly retracts it, shaking his head roughly. “You and Dad can either see me off willingly…or wake one morning to find me gone. Either way,” her son tells her, and Grace fears she may very well shatter into a million pieces at his words, “you’re never going to be able to change my mind about this.”

She says nothing in return, merely standing and leaving her son’s bedroom. It in't until she is safely in Tommy’s arms that she gives herself to leave to weep, her husband asking no questions but entirely aware that she has failed before she ever truly began. Their son is going to leave them, trade away perhaps everything he has, his life itself, for the horrors of war. Tommy’s wedding vow had ensured Charlie hadn’t seen a gun until he was thirteen and begged endlessly for weeks on end to accompany his father and uncles on a hunt, her son returning white-faced and whispering to her when she bid him goodnight how terrible it was to watch something die. But now, it seems he wants nothing more than to pick up a gun and kill mindlessly, and Grace knows that if he is lucky enough to return it will not be as the son she has cherished for the last eighteen years. Her own experience with killing assures her of that, because she can still remember the sticky blood on her hands, the hot bile in her throat. Taking another life is not as easy as it sounds, and yet, her son seems determined to pursue such a course.

“I’m sorry, Tommy,” she murmurs, wanting nothing more than to sleep for days on end. She is so very tired, sick of thinking about what is going to happen to her son and how she is powerless to prevent anything no matter her desire.

“It’s not your fault,” her husband replies thickly, smoothing a hand down her hair.  She can hear the emotion in his voice, and the sound merely makes her weep harder, the tears hot on her cheeks. The maids will be wondering why they have not appeared for breakfast, their daughters alone at the expansive table, but she cannot move. In Tommy’s arms, she mourns the loss of a son who has not yet left them, for she knows it is likely he will not return to them, and if he does, it will be in a box just like her brother had. She has had so many she love die, had so many leave her, and yet, just as she thought it safe to love wholeheartedly, it seems as if another will be taken from her.  “It’s no one’s fault.”

But it is. It is entirely her fault. She is the one who gave life to Charlie. When she sought out Tommy at Epsom to tell him of Charlie’s existence, she could have just as easily gotten rid of him when she realised she was pregnant, continued about her life with Clive and never known how easily she could love another person, how much she would do for someone. Even when Tommy hadn’t appeared as he promised she still hadn’t contemplated getting rid of the baby, because even if its father had broken her heart Tommy’s child wasn’t to blame. She would have passed it off as Clive’s, even if she knows now such a notion would have been near impossible considering how much Charlie looks like his father. In any scenario, Charlie would still be born and loved and cherished. Perhaps even if she had remained with Clive Charlie would want to serve in the war. Perhaps his desire to go is as much a part of him as loving him is a part of her. Grace only wishes it didn’t hurt so, contemplating and fretting over what is going to happen to him. 

Grace lets Tommy reassure her, lets him press tender kisses to her cheeks in an unusual overt display of emotion, but all the while she can see their son’s tombstone, grand and beautiful but entirely unwanted. _Charles Fredrick Shelby, 1922. Beloved son, brother and nephew._

She gave him life, and soon, someone else is going to kill him. Her son is going to die, and she’s powerless to prevent it.

_\---_

When the telegram comes, Grace refuses to look at it. She knows what it says, even before she watches Margaret’s face fall, Kathleen’s arms coming to support her sister as she crumbles. Tommy storms from the study, an ensuing crash echoing through the house and Grace merely sits down at their shared desk, bile rising in her throat as she struggles to breath. The telegram in her hands, she forced her eyes to focus on the black text.

_Regret to inform…missing in action…perhaps captured..._

No, she wants to retort, wants to scream, he’s dead. Somewhere deep inside of her, just like she knew of his existence before she dared to visit a doctor, Grace knows her son is gone. The war took him from them, like she knew it would, and so she opens her mouth and screams, screams until her voice is hoarse and Tommy has come down from their bedroom, his bloodied hands tightly gripping her shoulders.

“Grace,” he murmurs, but she doesn’t dare look at him. Not when their son looks ( _looked_ ) so much like him.

The sun sets, and she sobs silently into Tommy’s waistcoat.

The sun rises, but Charlie is still dead.

**Author's Note:**

> If SK's storyline is still breaking my heart months after s3 ended, I'm determined to shatter it entirely, okay? 
> 
> But still, sorry.


End file.
